


you're not my savior, just someone i used to see

by orphan_account



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-08 03:38:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11638146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It will be a failure that pierces his heart every time.





	you're not my savior, just someone i used to see

**Author's Note:**

> focus on the pain, i want to feel it all / i feel the violent waves crashing down  
> hold me 'til i fall asleep / everything reminding me

He had always seemed too good to be true.

 

The perfect playmate, with those eyes glittering with mischief, those fingers looping around to clasp Bruce’s wrist, tugging him forward as they explored his family home, creeping through every abandoned corridor and musty wine cellar.

He lets himself be led, always only a step behind Harvey, mingled laughter ringing in their wake.

 

The sympathetic companion, those eyes mournfully downcast, those fingers now splaying across his back as Bruce is brought in for yet another supposed comforting embrace, one of many he’s had as of late — but this. _This_ one. This is one of the rare ones where he, still in a haze of shell-shocked pain and grief and loss, somehow recognizes authenticity in the hold. In these brief moments wherein their bodies are pressed together, he senses his loss mirrored.

(“I’m so sorry,” Harvey murmurs into his ear.)

He leans into that touch. He rests his head against Harvey’s shoulder, and for the first time in ages, it seems, he cries.

 

The understanding friend, sleepless nights now rimming those eyes with a darkness, putting an imperceptible tremor to those fingers. And yet, he still smiles for the cameras, shakes hands, and proselytizes with an almost-blinding effervescence. Fights for Gotham in the day just as he fights for it in the night. Yet, he still accepts the flimsy excuses proffered by his best friend as he ducks out mid-fundraiser, charity ball, or gala. Always pretending not to notice the slackening of his grin, the moment of hesitancy before Harvey lets go of his hand.

 

Bruce has relied on his good nature far too much. Relied on the steadfast support that has always been there, the guiding hand, the warm, familiar body that he can bury himself in, banks on the second, third, fourth, fifth chance he is given without a moment’s deliberation.

So preoccupied in his own boyhood mirth or suffering or selfless toil against Gotham’s demons and his own, he has somehow neglected the demons that bite at the heels of his own friend. Demons buried in a child’s eyes, masked by a child’s smile, then hidden deep in the laughter of a man who loves his city and his friend too much to let his own troubles be known beyond jovial protestations of being worked to the bone and then some. Ones he should've recognized because they so closely resembled his own.

 

But it was easy, so easy to take him for granted. For what was life without this constant that has always been his comfort? Without this blazing light that combats not just Gotham’s darkness, but the very darkness that permeates his own soul?

It was a life he could not comprehend.

 

And yet it is one he must know as soon as Harvey walks into that courtroom. As soon as acid splatters his face, and he screams a scream so wild, so desperate, so full of raw _helplessness,_ that it is almost an accusation unto itself.

His knees buckle as he watches Harvey writhing on the ground, watching his flesh erode and expose the bone and the demons that have always lurked underneath. Bruce's trembling hands ball into fists, ready to defend him in a fight he is twenty years too late to.  
  
Blood spattered or acid sizzling, this is Crime Alley once again, but here.

Here he could’ve _done_ something.

 

* * *

 

It will be a failure that pierces his heart every time he looks into those eyes and grasps desperately for those fingers. _Harvey, please_ is always the strangled cry that leaves his throat, as Batman or Bruce Wayne, as he watches his friend’s face, both scarred and unscarred, contort with rage and grief.

He is eight years old again and he is watching someone he loves leave him.

Harvey is not so understanding anymore. 

_“Your fault,”_ he spits out, voice shaking, eyes brimming with angry tears.

“My fault,” Bruce echoes, complicit in his truest friend’s pain.

Their losses and demons are mirrored once again. Now and forever.

 

(“I’m so sorry.”)


End file.
